Tenant Screening Checklist

Walk the application top to bottom: every adult occupant 18+ has a separate application, prior addresses cover the last three years, all employment fields populated, and the applicant has signed the screening authorization. Incomplete applications go back before any verification work — running a partial pull wastes the screening fee.

Match the photo, name, and date of birth on the ID against the application. Driver license, passport, or state ID — not a work badge or insurance card. Capture both sides of the ID for the file; the SSN on the application is what the screening vendor uses, so a transposed digit here is the most common reason a credit pull comes back as a no-hit file.

Call landlords from two tenancies back, not just the current one — current landlords sometimes give a glowing reference to move a problem tenant along. Look up the property in county assessor records to confirm the phone number actually reaches the owner of record, not a friend posing as a reference.

Ask specifically about late fees charged, NSF returns, and any pay-or-quit notices served. The useful question is not 'did they pay rent?' but 'how many times did rent arrive after the grace period?' Document the prior landlord's name, the dates of tenancy, and the responses verbatim in the screening file.

Two most recent pay stubs plus the prior year's W-2 is the standard documentation set. For self-employed applicants, ask for the prior two years of tax returns (1040 plus Schedule C or K-1) — bank statements alone don't separate gross deposits from net income.

Look up the employer's main number independently — applicant-provided supervisor cell phones are the most common screening fraud vector. Verify dates of employment, position, and gross pay; many HR departments will only confirm employment dates without compensation, in which case the pay stubs and W-2 carry the income proof.

TransUnion SmartMove, Experian RentBureau, or your PMS-integrated screening (AppFolio, Buildium, Yardi) — all return a tenant-facing soft pull that doesn't ding the applicant's score. Record the score and the reporting agency name; both are required on the FCRA adverse action notice if the application is later denied.

Discharged Chapter 7 bankruptcies older than two years and unrelated to housing are typically not a denial basis under most published criteria — pulling on them inconsistently is where disparate-impact claims start. Flag housing-related collections (prior landlord balances, utility writeoffs in tenant's name) separately from medical or student loan collections.

HUD's 2016 guidance bars blanket criminal-history bans — each conviction must be evaluated for nexus to housing safety, recency, and severity. Arrests without convictions cannot be used at all. Several jurisdictions (Oakland, Seattle, NJ, NY) have stricter Fair Chance ordinances that delay the criminal check until after a conditional approval; check your locality before pulling.

Search the registry in every state the applicant has lived in over the last seven years — registry data is state-by-state and a single-state search misses cross-border histories. Document the search date and result; if a hit comes back, escalate to the regional manager before any communication with the applicant.

Walk through your published criteria — credit floor, income ratio, eviction lookback, criminal nexus rules — applied to this applicant the same way they were applied to the last twenty. Deviations need a documented business-justification reason in the file. Inconsistency between applicants is the single most common Fair Housing exposure.

Document the outcome: Approve, Conditional Approval (co-signer or higher deposit), or Deny. Note the specific criterion that drove the decision, not just 'failed screening.' For denials, the cited reason must reference the same criterion list the applicant received with the disclosure.

Required by FCRA §615(a) within a reasonable time of the denial. The notice must name the consumer reporting agency (TransUnion, Experian, etc.) with their address and toll-free number, state that the agency did not make the decision, and inform the applicant of the right to a free copy of the report and to dispute its accuracy. Missing this step is the most common FCRA class-action trigger.

Spell out the specific condition — qualified co-signer with verified 5x income, additional security deposit (subject to state caps), or last-month's rent — and the deadline to satisfy it before the unit goes back on the market. Conditions must trace to a documented criterion failure, not be applied selectively.